If you want to get new users fast, you should consider running a referral promotion for your app. Your goal should be to have all your current users to recommend your app to their friends, family, and co-workers.

One of the reasons why apps such as Uber and Lyft were able to grow so quickly was because they were running referral promotions for both drivers and passengers. Drivers were getting other drivers on the platforms while passengers were telling their friends about how amazing the taxi app was.

You may think that getting referrals is difficult, but in reality, it can be very easy. What is important to understand here is that a referral program will not run itself. Not only do you need to create it, you also need to inform your users that you have such a program and then keep on promoting it by giving out rewards and incentivising people to use it.

You may need to invest some capital into your referral promotions. If you do, you need to think about your investment in the same way you think about the money you spend on advertising because a referral program is a form of advertising.

The difference between a referral program and advertising that brings new users who haven’t heard of your service/product before is that referred users usually become better customers. They hear about you from their friends, which means that they will trust you more than someone who downloaded your app after seeing an ad somewhere. Referred users are also less price resistant because the fact that their friends use your app means that your prices are justified. For this reason, referred users will rarely question your prices. Finally, referred users are very likely to refer their friends, too, because they think about your app as something that they would like talk about with people they know.